Scientific exploration, mining operations, commercial operations, and standard or contract military operations occur throughout the world, and require food, beverage, medical supplies, sensitive equipment, and ways of preserving them. When these operations take a unit or deployment far from a base location, deliveries of supplies may not occur with regularity. Especially in desert locations, the ability to keep a cold environment for food, beverage, medical supplies, and testing samples and equipment requires a significant amount of energy for cooling and storage.
Additionally, a supply of ice can be required, but difficult to obtain. In many instances, ice supplies may be obtained by contracting with a commercial ice operation in a neighboring city or town. Even with such a contract, the costs associated with transporting the ice and delivering it to forward operations can be substantial, not to mention dangerous. Moreover, the time required to deliver the ice can often result in only realizing seventy percent or less of the total purchased ice due to melting during transportation and delivery. Even when the ice is delivered, a unit may be limited in the amount of cold-storage available for the ice, reducing the possible supplies. What is needed are ways of allowing an individual unit to produce their own ice supplies, and maintain them until the ice is needed. Embodiments of the technology disclosed herein address these and other problems.